


equilibrium

by loamvessel



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Friends to Lovers, M/M, Sharing a Bed, cuddling (almost naked) for warmth, like canon-typical gay activity, post s12
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-15
Updated: 2017-05-15
Packaged: 2018-11-01 00:16:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10910382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loamvessel/pseuds/loamvessel
Summary: At first it was the small things. They stood close. They always stood close. It comforted Mac to have Dennis in his periphery at all times, where he could run ocular pat downs on any possible threats for both of them at once. Because even though Dennis is taller than Mac by an inch, he has significantly less mass and a far less substantial capacity for intimidation. So they stand close together, almost without realizing, and when they touch it's merely accidental, even if it sends a little thrill through him, even if the skin burns when Dennis takes his hand away, even if, later, half hard, the thought of it sends a high long tremor through him like standing beside a boom box playing something with good bass, well, that's just the truth of the matter.A.K.A. Dennis is oblivious and completely, absolutely too much and Mac is like a (highly self-aware) puppy in love.





	equilibrium

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flourwings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flourwings/gifts).



At first it was the small things. They stood close. They always stood close. It comforted Mac to have Dennis in his periphery at all times, where he could run ocular pat downs on any possible threats for both of them at once. Because even though Dennis is taller than Mac by an inch, he has significantly less mass and a far less substantial capacity for intimidation. So they stand close together, almost without realizing, and when they touch it's merely accidental, even if it sends a little thrill through him, even if the skin burns when Dennis takes his hand away, even if, later, half hard, the thought of it sends a high long tremor through him like standing beside a boom box playing something with good bass, well, that's just the truth of the matter. 

Mac's moved on. He's gay, he knows that much, and he's fairly certain he's in love with Dennis, and if Dennis doesn't see that, or if he doesn't love him back, then, well, there are always other men, quality lays like Rex with huge bis and tris who could have him on his back in an instant but let him pin them down and murmur you're mine, bitch, twinks in button up shirts with good hair and a penchant for 80s femme rock that call him baby and let him make them breakfast. If he wakes up every morning with a little keening of disappointment, if he still has to bite back Dennis's name, then, well, in the words of one of his more recent partners, (Eurotrash from Paris with an aunt in Philadelphia and a particular fondness for Rick Astley) c'est la vie. 

But Dennis's absence cuts a hole in him, and when he comes limping back into Mac's life, skulking off the back of a greyhound direct from North Dakota, the situation becomes unbearable. 

It starts with all of the little touches. 

Like Dennis having an eyelash on his cheek that he mysteriously can't brush away on his own, because his hands are full, Mac, someone has to actually do some work around here. 

Or the day where Dennis, for reasons incomprehensible, finds fault with Mac's shaving after living together for almost two decades, and he's forced (but secretly much more obliged than he'd like to admit) to sit still and mutemouthed for fifteen minutes as Dennis lathers shaving cream over the planes of his jaw and looks at him, their faces only inches away. 

Or they'll be having movie night, and it'll be Dennis's night to choose, because he's sick of Predator and even the dong shot can't justify the sheer number of times they've seen Thundergun, and he'll choose some weird horror movie Mac has never seen and doesn't care to, and the movie has, like, forty jump scares and Dennis knows about Mac's catlike reflexes, he's sure of it, and so every time Mac twitches and his knee brushes the outside of Dennis's thigh and burns there, just a little, a high, quick stripe of hot-cold, Dennis has no right to make that soft, weird little noise that Mac can't quite parse but is probably disapproving. 

Or, Dennis'll get in a fight with the waiter at Guigino's, again, and he'll be striding back, eyes full of hellfire, because Dennis decided to be dick and not only order spaghetti but insult the waiter’s physical appearance and mental capabilities, and he'll turn to Mac with his eyes dead serious and say: “dude, hold my hand.” 

“What?” Mac says, completely taken aback, and there absolutely is not a cloud of quiet hope flaring through him. “What'd you mean, hold your hand?”

“I thought I was being perfectly clear, Mac.” Dennis puts his hand out on the table. Hold it. Come on, we're on an extremely time sensitive schedule, here. Dennis glances at him for a minute, then goes dead serious. “Listen, dude, that waiter is going to show up in a second and kick us out for being ‘drunk and disorderly’ or some bullshit. But if we pass ourselves off as a gay couple, we can make it seem like discrimination. Even get a free meal out of it. Mac-”

“Okay, okay,” he says. Dennis's hand feels small and delicate in his, slim and fluteboned and moister than he expected, given management is blasting them with the air conditioning. This isn't the first time they held hands, of course, but he doesn't count dying together on a sinking Christian cruise as any kind of concrete milestone, and he thrills a little at the notion of it, in the same quiet, traitorous little way he had thrilled at playing Dennis's lover. It feels right, he thinks. It feels like how things should be. Even if they aren't. Even if he looks up and sees the tail end of a grin slipping off of Dennis's face, and it could be his imagination or it could be one of those furtive, fleeting grins that he catches himself making at when Dennis is turned away. Even if they hold hands for significantly longer than necessary because neither of them seems to want to be the first to let go. 

They don't get a free meal, but they don't get kicked out, either. Dennis skimps on the tip and they drive home with their knees held carefully parallel in their seats, Philadelphia barely a suggestion outside the window. 

___

But everything crystallizes the night of the blizzard. Which, thinking retroactively, Mac should have seen coming from the outset, because what happened was so obvious, so distinctively Dennis he would be looking at it for years and kicking himself for having missed it. 

The storm blew in from the North, as most storms were want to do. Dee freaked out, the way she always did when there was some kind of natural catastrophe, and Frank and Charlie cooked up some scheme involving a grease fire, crab meat, and igloos, because Frank had an igloo guy and he was an opportunist. Mac and Dennis, however, were reasonable people, and planned to hole up for a couple days with the heat cranked up to max and a week's supply of beer, mac and cheese, and microwave burritos. 

That is, until the whole heating situation. 

___

“You gotta be blasting my balls,” he says. 

Dennis, that bastard, is the absolute portrait of dignified calm. “Much as I would love to be, as you put it, blasting your balls, Mac, I'm dead serious here. We have absolutely no heating.”

“Bullshit,” he counters. “First of all, you were the one that came up with the whole blasting in the ass thing, so don’t start me on that. Second, how is it that we have no heat? We even paid the bills on time and everything.”

“Well, no, actually, that was the bill for the month before.”

“Shit,” he says. He wasn't sure why Dennis was coming to him about it- Dennis liked to think he was the idea guy, even if the ownership of the idea in question was, more often than not debatable- which meant he must be in dire straits to be coming to Mac for help. “Look, what do you want me to do about this? I can go ask Frank for the money, I can go intimidate the landlord-”

“Believe me, Mac,” Dennis says, “you're not going to be intimidating anyone. You’re not intimidating. You just aren’t.”

“I’m plenty intimidating,” he replies, deeply affronted. “And why the hell are you telling me about it, dude? What the hell do you expect me to do?” 

Dennis is quiet for a moment, and Mac thinks he's legitimately caught Dennis off guard. “Well, uh, I thought you'd to have a bit of a heads up. So we could make arrangements.” 

“What the hell kind of arrangements, Den? Like a space heater?”

“Who's gonna be selling a space heater at 12:30 in the morning in the middle of a blizzard? Use your head, Mac.”

“Oh, right.”

“I meant arrangements for the sleeping situation,” says Dennis, his face a mask of perfect, studied calm, the kind that tells Mac that whatever the hell it is Dennis has planned, he’s absolutely not going to like it. 

And he’s right about that, in some ways, but at the same time, he really isn’t. Because, as it turns out, the most efficient ways to keep warm when sleeping is sleeping naked. Direct body to body contact. 

“I don't know,” says Mac, because, as the gay man in the situation he has the liberty to point out this type of thing. “It seems more gay than anything. How could you possibly be warmer without clothes?”

Dennis casts him a withering look. “You mean to tell me you don't believe in evolution, Mac, but take a simple hypothesis and suddenly you're some science expert. They use it to treat hypothermia. Come on.”

"Science is a liar, sometimes," Mac retorts blithely. But in truth, it's not so much the scientific aspect- he really couldn’t give a shit about science- that has him on edge as it is the idea of sleeping next to Dennis, and naked, no less. All of that possibility- the long, smooth planes of Dennis's back, the quiet, defenseless way he curls in on himself when he sleeps, his arms held out like a boxer, the flushed red lips, and even when fully clothed, with Dee and Old Black Man in close proximity, it had taken all of Mac's willpower not to curl around Dennis, to trace the places of the face he knew so well but that softened with age and sleep, and worse, to bite his shoulder, to kiss his neck. 

With that in mind, sleeping naked in a bed with Dennis on one of the coldest days of the year sounds like an absolute disaster of Mad Max-style apocalyptic magnitude. Which is why they end up sleeping on opposite sides of the bed in full cold weather gear, trying to stay as still as possible because, believe it or not, a gore-tex parka is loud as shit. 

“Den”, he says, after Dennis rolls over for probably the thousandth time. “Would you mind lying still for one goddamn second?”

Dennis's ire is immediate and absolute. “Would I mind? Would I mind? Yeah, I certainly would mind, Mac, especially given that this was your idea- I proposed an option. A perfectly reasonable option with grounds in scientific fact. It's not my fault you don't want to act on it.”

He does have a point, but given that said option was gay as shit and absolutely not feasible, Mac isn't going down without a fight. He rolls over in a huff, making sure the coat makes as much noise as physically possible, waits a few seconds, and then rolls over again. Just to piss Dennis off more than anything. Just so he knows how fucking annoying he is. 

“Mac,” says Dennis, after awhile, “you realize you're only hurting your own argument. “

He doesn't answer, just rolls over again. But at the same time, his mind thinks, quietly, traitorously, a little hopefully, that Dennis really is right about the parkas. Neither of them is going to get any sleep like this. 

“Fine,” he says, and he can’t see it, but he knows that Dennis has on some smug asshole grin. “But underwear on, okay?”

And then they’re almost naked, and he’s big-spooning Dennis in the midst of a goddamn ten-degree blizzard and praying to God and every saint ever canonized that he won't get a boner in the middle of the night. His arm is thrown over Dennis’s side, and Dennis’s back is inches away from his stomach, and it’s the closest he’s ever been to Dennis in years, and in a non-wrestling context, maybe forever. 

“See,” says Dennis, snapping Mac back to earth. “Not so bad, is it?”

“If you say so, dude,” says Mac, as neutral as he can manage with Dennis literally inches away. He's still cold as shit, he can't deny that, but it certainly is nice. “Listen, Den. If we're gonna do this, I have one stipulation.”

“And what’s that, Mac?”

“We don't talk about it. Ever. It's just a one-time thing.”

“Of course, dude,” says Dennis, in an odd shade of a voice. “Listen, Mac, you think I want to be doing this? You think I want to be lying half naked with my best friend in a fucking frozen apartment on one of the coldest nights of the year?”

“It was your idea, Den,” he shoots back. 

“Fine, then. Fine, asshole.” Dennis extricates himself from Mac, makes to scramble up from the bed. “We can go back to the parkas, if that's what you really want.”

“No! Listen, Dennis, I just-this is a bit odd for me, too.”

Dennis pauses at the end of the bed, looks at Mac. 

“C'mon, dude, come back to bed.”

It's one of the most forward things he's ever said, in all of the however many years they've been together, and Dennis, no doubt, is as aware it as he is. His gaze flickers to Mac, the bed, and back to Mac again, and settles on him. “It's pretty weird for me too, Mac,” he said, but his voice is softer, more gentle. He turns around, slides back into the bed and they lie there in silence for several long minutes. Mac’s not having the easiest time breathing, and he doesn't think Dennis is either, judging from the frequency of the white smoke clouds that peel from his mouth, because of course the heater has to go out in the middle of what feels like Arctic winter. Just their luck, he thinks. But some part of him-an inordinately large part of him, he might add-is deeply, deeply grateful. 

Spooning Dennis has been something on his never-really-acknowledged bucket list for a long time, hell, forever, something that until now existed only in the realm of hazy fantasy, one where Frank isn't an asshole and Dee has a successful acting career as a forty-year-old woman and Charlie reads, like, Shakespeare or something. But here they both are, and it's both more and less awkward than he thought it would be-more, because Dennis's teeth are chattering like crazy, but also less, because, like holding Dennis's hand that one time in Gugino's, there's something that feels so fucking right about all of this. The way Dennis's body fits so easily against his, and the way Dennis pulls Mac's arm around him like a blanket, his palm only inches away from the skin above Dennis's heart. And, although it's probably from the cold or something-does cold make your heart go slower or faster? he can't remember-the way Dennis's heart seems to be going a mile a minute, as if all of this is as weird and awkward and downright fucking exhilarating as it is for Mac. And his face is inches from Dennis's shoulder, and he can smell him, that weird, expensive, flowery, kinda girly smell that Dennis gives off from all of his weird skincare routines, that smell that's so familiar and so distinctly Dennis that Mac has to physically, consciously stop himself from burying his nose in Dennis's goddamn Goldilocks curls and breathing in deep. 

“Just a one-night thing,” he hears Dennis say, minutes or maybe hours later, when Mac's insane heartbeat has finally reduced itself from its former speed of a mile a goddamn minute. “All of this is just a one-night thing, dude.” And then-although this may just be a dream-he thinks, he's almost certain, that Dennis shuffles backwards in bed, so that they're truly skin on skin, and that Mac's stomach is pressed against the valley of Dennis's back, and that Dennis pulls Mac's arm around him even closer and that- and he swears on his life this happened, even if the rest of it didn't-that Dennis makes a small, contented little noise, like something a cat would say when you pet it, and that he tilts his head so his cheek is pressed up against Mac's hand, and then they sleep. 

___

They don't talk about it in the morning, and they don't talk about it for the rest of the day, either. Dennis calls someone and the heating goes back to normal, but they both figure they should play it safe, because they don't really know if it'll short out again. And besides, Mac hasn't slept so well in weeks as he did that night, and that's really all that it's about, and absolutely nothing else. So it's settled. 

The next night is both more and less awkward than the first, but the one following it is a bit better, and by the fifth night it's almost second nature for both of them. Dennis'll curl up in bed and Mac'll wrap himself around him and sling an arm over Dennis's chest and they'll sleep. And that's absolutely all that happens, even after the cold snap passes, and winter in its entirety passes, too, the ash colored snowbanks and their pockmarks of garbage and dog piss subsiding into a gray-brown slush. And then even that's gone, and the green is back on the trees and Dennis drags him out to play frisbee in the park- to pick up girls, apparently- and even though he really is pale as a porcelain doll Mac can barely keep his eyes off of him. But it feels right, to sleep that way, even if neither of them ever mention it. It feels right, is all, it just feels like the right thing to do, the natural continuation of the course of their relationship. 

And all of a sudden it’s March, and they’re holed up in the bar after the St. Paddy’s day rush, drinking beer from the tap and falling all over each other the drunker they get. This is something normal, a tradition, practically, both the late night drinking but also the way they drift together, slowly, almost (but not quite drunkenly enough to be) unconsciously, because booze is a great buffer for any kind of weird thing you might do or say, any line you might cross that might make the energy between you and your friend-turned-roommate-turned-hazy-will-they-or-won't-they-almost-lover a little bit too real. Plus, there’s the highly likely chance that the other person is gonna brown the entire night out anyways. 

And it’s that possibility that gives Mac the courage to ask the question that’s been lurking in the back of his mind for, hell, months, ever since the whole sleeping together thing started. “Dude,” he ventures, turning to Dennis, because Dennis would know, because Dennis has all the answers, “what's up with this?”

“What's up with what, Mac,” murmurs Dennis, half asleep against the bar, but Mac knows, from the way he pushes himself up on his elbows and tilts his head that he’s listening 

“You know, this”-he gestures vaguely. “This arrangement.”

Dennis has to think about this for a while. “It's a financial thing,” he says finally. “We're actually saving money by doing this.”

It’s Mac’s turn to think about it. “How, dude? I mean, like, I’m not that good with numbers, but this doesn’t really make any sense.”

“I wouldn't expect you to understand, Mac,” says Dennis, his voice cold and barely drunk at all. A part of Mac is relieved, because he’s sure Dennis knows as much about the financial arrangement as he does, which is to say, absolutely nothing, but Dennis is giving the both of them an out. A chance for things to go back to normal. To not have to look too closely at the weird stuff. It’s how they’ve always lived, and it’s worked out fine enough for them, hasn’t it. “It's a quite nuanced arrangement,” Dennis is saying. “It requires a head for numbers which you, as much as it pains me to inform you, Mac, absolutely do not have.”

He shrugs. Yeah, he's stupider than Dennis. Dennis has told him this, like, a million times. But at the same time, Dennis only gets mad when you hit something personal with him, which means maybe, just maybe, whatever this is means as much to Dennis as it does to him. And maybe he doesn’t want things to go back to normal. Maybe he wants them paranormal. Or supernormal. Or something like that. Something that acknowledges this strange, quiet bedrock that’s sprung up between them. 

But nothing happens. They drink in silence for a little bit longer, long enough for Mac to wonder if Dennis has forgotten the conversation entirely, or if he’s already in brownout mode. But then Dennis looks at him, and half slurs: 

“You know, it’s a good arrangement. I’m glad, uhhh, I’m glad I decided to turn off the heating that one night.”

Until then, Mac had been approaching brownout levels himself, and it takes much longer than it should for the words to register, but when they do, he’s never been more lucid in his life. 

“Jesus fucking Christ, dude,” he manages. “Are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me? You switched off the heating? The night of the blizzard? That was you?”

Dennis looks at him. Mac isn’t sure if guilt is an emotion Dennis feels, but he sure looks like he’s feeling it now. “I didn’t-” He blusters. “I have no clue what you’re talking about, Mac-”

“The night of the goddamn blizzard, man. You switched off the heat, there was no building thing, that was all you. You literally just told me, man. You literally just told me. We could have got hypothermia, we could have died, man.”

Dennis shrugs. “I didn't turn it off, Mac, I just turned it down a little. A lot. But not like, freezing levels. We weren’t gonna get hypothermia, okay. Can you get that through your mind?”

Mac is about to blurt out some incredulous response, but then he remembers that this is Dennis, after all, who has, on more than one occasion, gone without food for three days straight. Hypothermia was probably nothing to him, just a small sacrifice to be made for- 

And then it hits him. 

“Dude. You were doing all of this just to sleep with me.”

Dennis looks pained. “Mac-” he says, cautiously. 

“Not, like, ‘sleep with’ sleep with. But like, sleep in the same bed kind of sleep with.”

Dennis just looks at him. 

“Jesus Christ,” he says, but there’s something rising up in him, something too hopeful to be angry. Something that would take hypothermia in a heartbeat if it meant he could be close to Dennis. 

“I mean,” Dennis was saying, “you're gay now, and you have all these guys over all the time. How was I supposed to know what you wanted?”

But they both know what he means: how was I supposed to know if you still wanted me. Dennis is looking at him in that way that means he's trying not to look, glancing out of the corner of his eye even though Mac knows Dennis is watching every move. This is a big moment. For both of them. 

“Of course I want you, Dennis,” he says carefully. “I'll always want you. We're, well, you know-” 

And that's the million-dollar question, isn't it? 

Dennis looks at him. He looks down at his feet, looks back up again. Catches Mac's eye and darts away. Swallows. He doesn't seem to know what to do with his hands. 

“Goddamn it, Mac, you fucking idiot. You have no goddamn clue-”

“About what, dude?” he manages, and that same feeling that fills his chest around Dennis is rising, swelling, aching against his abdomen, his ribs, his throat. Because there’s no way Dennis could be saying what Mac thinks he’s saying, but there’s no way he could be saying anything else either. It’s too good to be true. 

Dennis takes a deep, slow breath, the kind Mac makes when he’s trying not to make his voice shake. “I just wanted to be close to you,” he says in a low voice. “I just wanted- but I didn’t know how-I couldn’t-” 

And then he looks up, for the first time since the conversation has started, and his face is pained and open and honest. Pouring longing. He looks the way Mac feels. And then their eyes meet and Mac knows, honestly, absolutely, that what he feels is what Dennis feels too. 

“Me too,” he tells Dennis. “But things were always, you know, like they are. Like they were, I guess.”

As they’ve been speaking, they’ve been leaning closer on their barstools. Dennis’s face is only inches away. 

“How are they now?” whispers Dennis, his voice quiet but hopeful. His eyes meet Mac’s again, and he doesn’t look away. 

“Not like that,” he says. “Different.” And he’s scared now, he can feel it, even through the booze haze. Because it’s been twice that he’s told Dennis he loved him- the first time with words, and the second with a black market rocket launcher in a crate, although he thought the intention was more than clear enough- and twice that Dennis hasn’t responded. Twice that Dennis has ignored it, or ran away, and never mentioned it again. 

But then Dennis leans forward and touches Mac's face, like he always used to when Mac gets angry. “Show me, Mac,” he says, and there's an edge of uncertainty there, a quiet tremor flickering in and out of focus. It's that tremor, that hesitation that tells Mac everything he needs to know about who they were to each other. About who they'll be. About how far they've come, and how far they can still go. 

“Show me what we are,” says Dennis, and his voice is stronger now. Absolute. Certain. 

Mac leans in and kisses him.


End file.
